“Well, goodbye, then,” Angela said quietly as she made her way to the door, her feet moving soundlessly over the carpet. She paused, an odd look crossing her face, as though she wished to add something, but then turned away once more.

Dunstan watched her leave, his calm façade concealing the turmoil within. For those brief seconds, she’d looked almost like…

No, he thought, shaking his head, unable to remove the image in his head: Angela, but with another face superimposed, a girl who had looked at him in the same way, who had screamed at him in desperate fury with big, tragic eyes like those. He sighed and closed his eyes.

How long has it been? he thought. Years. She was… hell, sixteen, I think. Yes. Sixteen. And I loved her. Still do. It’s funny; the one weak point I have… all of my troubles, all of my hang-ups… most people wouldn’t believe that it was all because of a girl named…


His thoughts trailed off here. He rose and removed a small painting from the wall. He carefully removed the frame’s back and took out the hidden photographs. For several minutes, he looked from one picture to another. One photo showed a beautiful dark-haired woman in a simple, elegant outfit. The other photo was of a young woman with pale skin and big eyes like an anime character. In her dark-colored formal dress, she was awkwardly lovely.

Dunstan closed his eyes, the memories flooding into his mind. The two women who had mattered most to him, and who had failed him most.


Like any wealthy family, the outwardly respectable Diggory family had many skeletons in the closet. Lucinda Harper Diggory had eating disorders, along with drug and alcohol problems, while her husband, Henry, had a gambling addiction.

Dunstan had been a semi-wanted child and the sole survivor of a set of twins, as his sister had not lived more than a day past her birth; his mother resented that she’d gained weight because of the pregnancy, but she was kind enough to him to where he was scarcely aware that she angry about it. His father was genial enough, but he was more fond of casinos than his family.

When Dunstan was about nine, tragedy struck.

“Mama won’t wake up,” he cried to his father worriedly.

“Probably just drank too much or had too many pills again,” Henry grmbled, setting his newspaper down reluctantly.

“There’s a bunch of empty pill bottles by her bed. Some in her bed too. More than usual.”

That caught his father’s attention. “What?!” his father exclaimed, rising quickly.

The coroner’s report revealed that a lethal amount of painkillers and sleeping pills had been consumed. The death was publicly declared accidental overdose, although suicide was almost definitely the truth.

And then, one day, she came into Dunstan’s life, when he was just about to start college. Her. The one whose image he could not shake, even after all these years.

Iris.